The Research Paper - Blog Post 7

The Burke reading this week had me think more about the potential that often lies hidden within the traditional research paper format. By this, I mean that there is so much meaningful work that a research paper can do, yet educators often opt out of this because of time, admin. pressures/requirements, or the effort that such an assignment requires. My students last year often lamented to me about the copious numbers of research papers they were writing for science and history classes; complaints normally centering on the amount of work these required, having to do multiple ones at once, and their lack of interest in the topic they were assigned to spend so much time researching and writing on. These research papers seemed to neglect to engage student interests or investment in the topic, which is rather problematic when these are the preconditions necessary for students to want to push through the prolonged research paper process.

If we want students to feel a sense of discovery as their research and of adding to the larger conversation as they write such a challenging paper, we need to design research papers or other prolonged writing assignments (I'd honestly put most process papers in this category) that are "grounded in the academic essentials but also the need to engage and challenge students through personal, meaningful inquiry that either validates what already interests students or creates an opportunity to discover what does interest them" (Burke, 2019, pp. 120-121). The success stories that Burke shared reminded me of my own experience with most of my high school English research papers. I enjoyed writing these because I found that the more I wrote, the more sophisticated my own thoughts on the topic became. I felt like I had become an expert on whatever I had written about, which was always a topic I had chosen myself because of an initial interest in it. 

I want this to be my students' experience as well. I really love the idea of Burke's Expert Project and would like to incorporate elements of it in my future assignments. I have thankfully had previous experience with similar research papers where our reading informed our writing beyond being the book we wrote an analysis on (my AP Lang research paper on Audrey Hepburn informed by Outliers by Malcolm Blackwell comes to mind) and where I had relative freedom to choose a writing topic that interested me (my 9th-grade research paper on the Roanoke colony disappearance (any mystery/folklore was fair game) comes to mind). These are elements of the assignment Burke proposes that I would like to continue. 

I also like how much time he sets aside for his Expert Project, yet of course, an entire year spent on one assignment is not always doable. I really like the idea of his assignment being a senior project as well, yet it also makes me wonder how teachers teaching the younger students build up students' research skills before they become seniors. I am teaching 9th and 10th graders this year, and such an expansive project is not something I would assign to such young students. Holding the attention of seniors is hard enough; just imagine little 9th-graders! My research assignments will likely need to take up less time and be focused on building specific research and writing skills instead of on everything at once. I also am concerned about how to help students figure out what they are interested in, as many students do not know this yet by 9th or 10th-grade or even by their senior year. Heart Maps or things like those will need to come into play to get students thinking if a research prompt is as vague as Burke's (I wish he had touched on this in this chapter). I think, though, that research papers for my 9th and 10th-graders will be more narrow in scope since I think these younger students will need more focus, yet I will still provide choice in the assignment to engage student interest in some capacity. 

For my In My Classroom Activity, I am thinking about possibly creating some sort of Heart Map-esque activity for students to narrow down their interests and potential writing topics. This could serve a research paper assignment, as well as writing assignments throughout the school year.